[...]... parameters, say, the person who is speaking or the time of utterance, and they apparently do so in virtue of certain aspects of their conventional meaning For this reason, the study of languages of this ilk provides a particularly fertile ground for the discussion of the interface between questions of meaning, issues of reference and truth, and at least certain forms of the contextual sensitivity uncontroversially... which, according to its defenders and opposers alike, has gained considerable footing, I also often refer to it as the ‘traditional’ view This book is devoted to the analysis of what the traditional view entails about meaning, truth, and the use of language, and to 10 $ Systems and their Inputs the defence of the resulting picture against a variety of misunderstandings and criticisms 1 A Rough First Sketch... supposed to go The aim of the present book is to clarify the understanding of meaning and truth that lies at the basis of the aforementioned programme, to explain how it may be applied to particular instances involving the use of language, and to defend it against an increasingly fashionable sceptical attitude The projects of clariWcation and defence are complementary The critics of the traditional paradigm,... talking of the price of a proposed law To the contrary, it is the system’s responsibility that it maps the (representation of the) utterance in question to the intuitively appropriate results—say, an assignment of truth depending on the cost of the law, rather than one dependent upon the price of a bird, my favourite colour, or the height of the Empire State Building Suppose, on the other hand, that my intentions... about meaning and truth Yet, the discussion of these general issues is of relevance not only from the point of view of the assessment of an inXuential research programme, but also for a variety of questions ‘internal’ to it If my considerations in the Wrst four chapters of this essay are correct, the traditional approach to meaning and truth has been misunderstood, to varying extents, not only by the. .. of appropriate hypotheses about their interface with the world of daily exchanges—hypotheses pertaining to the clause–index pair adequate for the representation of an utterance, Introduction $ 3 and to the understanding of the system’s t-distributional output in truth- conditional terms In a more pictorial fashion utterance clause-index À system À t-distribution ! ! truth- conditions The discussion of. .. discussion of the ‘gaps’ between, on the one hand, the system’s input (a clause–index pair) and output (a t-distribution), and, on the other hand, the intuitive parameters of semantic analysis (an utterance’s truth- conditions), is one of this book’s main concerns In the Wnal sections of Chapter 1, I begin to address the relationship between an utterance—that is, an instance of language use taking place... machines The main conclusion of this chapter is that even some of the foremost defenders of the customary treatment of indexical languages have burdened traditional systems with extraneous assumptions, thereby concealing the view of meaning and truth to which they are truly committed The methodological gains of my non-traditional labels, in particular my cautious distinction between contexts and indexes,... studies the ‘relations between linguistic expressions and the phenomena in the world to which they refer, and considers the conditions under which such expressions can be said to be true or false’, but proceeds to indicate its scope as the study of the meaning of expressions’ (Crystal 1991: 310) may be taken aback by the rather swift mention of meanings side by side with reference and truth, and may... types, or the predilection for the everyday concreteness of tokens The point has rather to do with the aims and scope of a systematic analysis able to yield results for utterances, i.e., with the aims and scope of ‘applied interpretive systems’ It is on these terms that I take up the utterance-semanticist’s challenge The conclusion I reach is negative: on an appropriate understanding of meaning and truth, . verdicts about u. But the interface between the system’s theory of meaning and truth, on the one hand, and the treatment of particular instances of language use, on the other, does not only raise. t-distribution truth- conditions The discussion of the ‘gaps’ between, on the one hand, the system’s input (a clause–index pair) and output (a t-distribution), and, on the other hand, the intuitive parameters of semantic analysis. notion of how such a story, or at least an important portion of it, is supposed to go. The aim of the present book is to clarify the understanding of meaning and tr uth that lies at the basis of the aforementioned